🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

Whether cats track whether a person is paying attention to them bears on their social cognition. This overview surveys experiments testing if cats adjust their behaviour according to a human's attenti…

Object-choice tasks, in which an animal must use a human pointing gesture to find hidden food, are a standard probe of social cognition. This overview surveys studies applying these tasks to cats, whi…

This overview surveys how the Great American Biotic Interchange, triggered by the rise of the Panamanian land bridge, allowed cats to spread between North and South America. Following this connection,…

A key concept in understanding cat impacts is that cats are subsidized predators, sustained by human-provided food and shelter independent of wild prey, and this overview surveys its consequences. It…

Cats appear in Greek and Roman art, texts and household life, though their role as rodent controllers competed with weasels and ferrets that were also kept for the purpose. This overview surveys liter…

Across much of the jaguar's range, cattle ranching both fragments habitat and fuels retaliatory killing when jaguars prey on livestock, a conflict that climate and land-use change can intensify. This…

Long-term studies that radio-collar wild felids provide rare opportunities to determine causes of death, including disease, with precision. This overview surveys how telemetry-based monitoring quantif…

The amount of felinine in cat urine is regulated in part by an enzyme called cauxin, which is excreted in the urine and influences the production of this scent precursor. This overview surveys the rol…

This overview surveys efforts to reconstruct the coat colour and appearance of the cave lion using frozen cubs and ancient DNA. The preserved fur of permafrost specimens provides direct evidence of pe…

This overview examines studies of genetic diversity and population structure within the cave lion, based on ancient DNA from specimens spanning the species' range and time depth. Such analyses have re…

This overview examines depictions of cave lions in Upper Paleolithic art, most famously the powerful panel of lions at Chauvet Cave in France, along with engravings and figurines from across Ice Age E…

This overview surveys the cave and sinkhole deposits that have yielded the best-preserved remains of Miracinonyx, including material from caves in the Grand Canyon region and pitfall sites such as Nat…

Tactile information from the whiskers is integrated with other senses in brain regions that coordinate orienting and targeting, including midbrain structures involved in directing attention and moveme…

Few cats are as difficult to study as the sand cat, and this overview reviews the methodological problems that leave its status uncertain. The species low density, nocturnality, remote desert habitat,…

As cats age, their perception of taste, together with smell, can change in ways that affect food acceptance. This overview surveys age-related changes in feline taste and their interaction with declin…

The Pantanal wetland supports one of the densest known jaguar populations, and its future hinges on the flood-drought cycle that climate change is disrupting. This overview surveys how altered rainfal…

Snow cover shapes how snow leopards stalk prey, move across terrain, and den, so shifts in the timing, depth, and persistence of snow under warming can alter their ecology. This overview surveys how r…

Cheetahs carry distinctive spot patterns that allow individual identification, but their low densities, wide ranging, and preference for open habitats pose particular challenges for camera trapping. T…

Cheetah social and spatial organization is unusual among cats: males often form lifelong coalitions, frequently of brothers, while females range solitarily over large areas, and this overview examines…

This overview synthesises human-cheetah conflict across East African rangelands, where cheetahs overlap with pastoralist livestock outside protected areas. It reviews patterns of depredation, mostly o…

Cheetah cubs suffer extremely high mortality in the wild, and understanding its causes has been central to assessing the species' resilience. This overview surveys research, much of it from long-term…

Cheetah cubs suffer extremely high mortality, much of it inflicted by lions and spotted hyenas. This overview synthesizes research documenting that on the open plains the majority of cheetah cubs die…

A survey of the heavy toll that lions and spotted hyenas take on cheetah cubs, a key demographic constraint on cheetah populations. Studies in the Serengeti and elsewhere have recorded that a large fr…

The illegal trade in live cheetah cubs for the exotic pet market follows established routes from the Horn of Africa across to the Arabian Peninsula, and this overview surveys research mapping and quan…

An overview of the extreme anatomical and physiological specializations that make the cheetah the fastest land predator and how they shape its predation ecology. Adaptations including a flexible spine…

The cheetah's celebrated speed is the centerpiece of a hunting strategy built on daytime pursuit of fleet prey. This overview synthesizes research on how cheetahs stalk to within range before launchin…

Cheetahs are notoriously difficult to keep and breed well in captivity, and their welfare has been intensively studied. This overview surveys the cheetah's particular vulnerabilities: evidence of chro…

One of the most striking early demonstrations of the cheetah's genetic depletion was that skin grafts exchanged between unrelated cheetahs were accepted rather than rejected, indicating near-identical…

Cheetahs specialize on small to medium antelope, with gazelles forming the dietary core across much of their range. This overview synthesizes kill and scat studies showing that cheetahs favor prey the…

Cheetahs range over very large areas at low density, a trait central to understanding why they are so hard to conserve. This overview surveys telemetry and movement research documenting cheetah home r…